


things are going good today (but nothing's going good today)

by calerine



Series: Nowhere Boys character studies [1]
Category: Nowhere Boys (TV)
Genre: Crossdressing, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 01:44:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calerine/pseuds/calerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Jake Riles character study.</p>
            </blockquote>





	things are going good today (but nothing's going good today)

**Author's Note:**

> Completely self-indulgent. Originally posted [here](http://badgels.tumblr.com/post/74552766223/things-are-going-good-today-but-nothings-going). Thanks to Charlie for always making me feel better about my words. You're a gift.

Jake’s earliest memory is of his mother. She’s clear-faced and delighted, holding his small hand in hers, bent-backed as he wobbles across a shoreline, sand devouring his toes. The waves are crashing into the beach, froth bubbling over and he’s not sure now if he just remembered that from a family video.

His parents have him when they’re teenagers. They tell him the abridged version of his mother, terrified to her bones and heavy with a child she loved so much, the contractions that started at dawn while she was spreading crumpled work uniform over swollen belly, resting her open palms over Jake like a precious invocation. They say _we always knew you were going to be beautiful_ , but nothing of those sleepless nights they spent tossing and turning between regret and desperate hope, whispers in the dark that we’ll be alright.

His mother takes him on long walks. Late Autumn days when the trees are bent from the weight of their emptiness and the breeze scoops leaves from the grounds and sends them tumbling joyously after his worn sneakers. His father rescues a puppy from “the mean streets of Bremin” - he says that with a laugh so Jake knows he’s joking. It licks bacon grease from the very tips of Jake’s fingers and jumps into bed with him, burrowing under covers despite his mother’s house rule that puppies are not allowed in sleeping areas.

Jake grows up understanding that just because Felix has a turntable, doesn’t mean he gets a new game console, that a school excursion means he has to wait two more weeks for a new uniform. But his mother keeps them together with her clever, intricate stitches. She lets him choose all the different shades of thread and coloured patches recycled from old clothes. He loves watching her sew, spends hours lulled by the rhythm of push and pull, until he tries one day and learns how needle pulling thread can make his joints bunch up and the back of his eyes ache.

So when the kids in school call him names - patchy, stitch and loser - he pulls his fist right back, past his ears and gives them bruises that don’t fade for weeks. He doesn’t feel at all bad. So gleeful instead is he that dark delight surges, delicious like poison seeping through his veins and straight to his heart.

He makes Felix cry when they’re nine, then suddenly he’s not sure if he’s loving the right way. He says “I think you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen” and Felix doesn’t want to see him for the rest of the day. Jake’s so scared afterwards. He loves Felix. He loves Felix so much it feels as if all those emotions might swell up in waves and waves, grasping up at his heart in a ferocious tsunami, dashing through the pillars of his ribs. His foundations are shaken by rejection. Maybe he’s been doing it wrong all along.

So he chooses what and who and why to love. Especially after his father starts to spend less time at home, even after he leaves entirely and Jake spends so many nights huddled in Ellen’s arms, in Felix’s bed that it starts to smell like his own. His own hair smells like Felix’s shampoo, sweet liquid honey and fresh apples plucked from the bosom of trees. Jake borrows dresses from Felix sometimes, and makes so many excuses about his cousin growing out of hers when all he thinks about is looking at his reflection in the mirror and feeling satisfied. Instead, he locks the doors and shuts the blinds and stands in front of his mother’s full-length mirror and traces his eyes over the contours of make up filling out the hollows of his cheeks.

Writing Mothers’ Day cards could be an artform with the resolve that Jake takes to them. They are him trying to making up for his father’s mistakes, to love his mother twice more than he does already and some days, he’s not sure if he can. The words refuse to be placed into lines. There must be a reason that his father never turns up.

He’s fourteen when his best friends stop talking to him. A match runs late and he gets home later still, after juice with his teammates to his mother - oh his beautiful mother - with her mug of tea gone cold and her tired elbows resting deep in the kitchen table. Don’t panic, Jakey and his stomach’s the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean. It’s past midnight by then. The chair creaks when he sits heavily. It feels like falling.

His mother says “he’ll be fine, the doctors are doing all they can.”

“Should I?” He replies and knows her answer even before.

“Give them some space.”

He turns up at Felix’s front door in the morning, so belated that he feels like old news, like forgiveness is a dream fast fading into the bleary lights of dawn. And Felix looks so small framed by the doorjamb, blinking unaffectedly at Jake’s rushed, inadequate explanation. Science explains that light travels faster than sound, that’s why lightning always seems to happens before thunder. This is how Jake remembers it from then on. First, the arch of Felix’s wrist, then his ears ringing from the door slamming shut.

Weeks later, he waves at Felix and Ellen from across the school quadrangle and Felix looks through him with blank, bloodshot eyes and Jake understands it’s time to step away.

Then, he clings desperately to the friendship that Trent extends, builds up a castle around himself, its stone walls impenetrable. Invaders would sooner drop in the murky depths of his moat than get near his gates. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to guard either, it doesn’t feel like he has anything precious that anyone else could want. But it stretches out the distance between him and Ellen and Felix. Their names are difficult on his tongue; they’re strangers. So he gives them new ones instead. It’s both revenge and the vastness of his bed that he can’t fill.

It’s easier at home. There are things he can count on; his mother asleep on the couch with her work uniform still on. He could tie knots from the lines in her smiles, the creases in between her eyes are a record of how much she sacrificed for him. Then there’s the smell and sizzle of bacon and fried eggs in the morning and his father as always, never fulfilling his promises - always fallibly infallible like some kind of bad sitcom joke.

At sixteen, his walls disappear, the space he’s always inhabited is filled by another history. His mother looks at him and says I have no son. He looks back and remembers photographs he’s seen, her hands around her ballooned stomach and stumbles, clear in the knowledge that this is a better world for her.

Jake apologises to Felix on a night that threatens a storm and it’s the first honest thing he’s said in ages. Felix presses fingertips to his ear and Jake leans into it. For once he wishes for nothing more. It feels like letting his tired bones sink into a familiar couch, it feels like home.

The second is him tugging Andy close one morning, asking breathlessly _can I kiss you?_ He doesn’t know if it’s proximity or something else entirely, expecting to have read the signs wrongly, expecting Andy to recoil in disgust. Instead, a grin spreads wide across his face and Andy says okay, his body leaning forward instinctively as if he’s been waiting forever for Jake to cradle his jawline, press his uncertain lips to his. (Later Sam pouts and asks all affronted, _where’s mine?_ Jake watches Felix twist around and pull Sam near with his hand on his neck. Then Andy, then Jake and a _took you long enough_ that descends straight into a puppy pile.)

The third is him stealing a skirt from Big W. There is no before or after to this story. Jake forgets the process of taking and keeping, his memories fast-forwarding straight to blue lace curling around his knees. No one throws stones. It’s a triumph and a full circle alike, like he’s wrestled all night with an angel and emerged victorious.

Jake is still sixteen when he grows into a person his mother might be proud of. His hands feel large enough to hold on when the rest are tired and slipping, when they’re exhausted from the unfamiliarity of this new world and family who looks straight through them as if they’re ghosts. He learns to lean on too, that his shoulders don’t have to carry the weight of his father’s failures - that those, are not his at all.

Some mornings when the sunlight is pale and faded, Felix climbs into bed with Jake like the puppy he had when he was five. He only has blurry impressions of Felix kissing his nose and burrowing under the blankets, his body warm with the residual heat of slumber. But he’s always still there when Jake wakes up a few hours later, pliant and gentle, a promise kept.

Sam is all soft where he’s not, and Jake doesn’t only mean the way his body lies with his, tender flesh where Jake is firm muscle. He means Sam’s open face when Felix tells him he’s beautiful, he means Sam’s clear eyes when Andy says _I love you_. With Sam, trust is a commodity with no repercussions, no account book or deficit. And when Andy kisses him on the tips of his toes, his palms pressing into the base of Jake’s neck, soft skin to soft skin, Jake imagines he swallows all of his inadequacy, his unintelligence made sufficient, _enough_.


End file.
